The trend lately has been to have very cautious curtains. Truthfully there are many times when a room calls for plain curtains. Take for example, a rustic cottage or a chalet in the mountains. A profusion of delicate passementerie there would feel unsuitable to the architecture and at odds with the honest charm of such spaces.

Then there are all of the over-the-top treatments from the 1980s that ignored architecture and scale. To make matters worse, the styles of this decadent decade were often rendered in inappropriate materials and by less than masterful hands. The resulting imprint has been a vulgar one, which is a shame as it’s cast collective doubt over a centuries-old craft.

But it’s not all doom and gloom. John Fowler (above photo) may have been the master of curtains, but there are many others carrying on his tradition or reviving the craft in new and unexpected ways. Let’s take a look: